The present invention relates to baby foods and more particularly to baby foods in which whole foods are used as the major source of solids in place of fillers.
Vitamin A designates a group of compounds essential for vision, growth, cellular differentiation and proliferation, reproduction and the integrity of the immune system. Humans can absorb vitamin A directly or they can convert certain carotenoids with provitamin A activity into vitamin A. The Recommended Dietary Allowances ("RDA"), revised in 1974, of vitamin A are: for infants and children up to 10 years, from 1,400 to 3,300 IU; for adult females, 4,000 IU; for adult males, 5,000 IU; for pregnant women, 5,000 IU; for lactating women, 6,000 IU. For infant food labeling purposes, a figure of 1500 IU of vitamin A is the Recommended Daily Intake ("RDI") upon which current food vitamin A declarations are based.
Carotenoids are pigments that are widely distributed in plant tissues. These pigments, which are also referred to as retinoids, are characterized by their red, yellow and orange colors. Carotenoids vary qualitatively and quantitatively in vitamin A activity. Only 50 of approximately 600 carotenoids found in nature have provitamin A activity and therefore can be converted in the body to vitamin A.
The occurrence of a pigmented carotenoid in food should not necessarily be taken as an indication of its value as a source of provitamin A that the body converts into vitamin A. For example, some yellow pigments, xanthophylls, that occur in squash, and some red pigments, lycopenes, that occur in tomatoes have no vitamin A activity whatsoever.
Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin that is stored primarily in the liver. In the human diet, vitamin A is derived primarily from two sources: 1) provitamin A from fruits and vegetables and 2) preformed vitamin A from animal sources. The richest sources of preformed vitamin A are liver and fish liver oils. Appreciable quantities are also present in whole and fortified milk and eggs. Because only a few carotenoids serve as pro-vitamin A compounds and because many other yellow and orange carotenoid and other pigments are present in plants, the color intensity of a fruit or vegetable is not a reliable indicator of its content of provitamin A.
Vitamin A is highly toxic when given in excess. This condition is sometimes referred to as acute hypervitaminosis A. Massive doses of beta-carotene are not converted to vitamin A efficiently enough to induce vitamin A toxicity, but excess carotene accumulates in the body and may cause carotenemia, discussed below. Cooking and pureeing vegetables ruptures cell membranes and thereby makes beta-carotene more available for human absorption. Because of this absorption phenomenon, babies that are fed strained baby foods with a high carotene content are particularly susceptible to carotenemia. Orange carrots are probably the most common cause of dietary carotenemia, especially in babies.
Government labeling requirements mandate that the amounts of vitamin A, as well as vitamin C and calcium and iron be printed on the label of baby foods, expressed as a "Percent of Daily Value" per serving. The term "Percent of Daily Value" is typically printed on the label as "% Daily Value." For baby foods, the percentage of Daily Value of vitamin A means the percentage of the "Reference Daily Intake" of 1500 IU in each jar. For example, if the label on a jar of baby food under the column % Daily Value stated 100%, it would contain no less than 1500 IU of vitamin A; if it stated 50%, it would contain no less than 750 IU of vitamin A. Food producers must therefore carefully categorize and measure the carotenoid pigments in food products. Chromatographic separation of different carotenoid pigments is believed to be the most accurate method currently available to identify those carotenoids that have vitamin A activity. The officially recognized method for measuring vitamin A is the procedure published by the Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC), which is known to those skilled in the art.
High-pressure liquid chromatography ("HPLC") may be used to separate beta-carotene from alpha-carotene and other carotenoids. Beta-carotene is the most active carotenoid and makes the most important quantitative contribution to human nutrition concerning vitamin A. Beta-carotene is the predominant carotenoid pigment in orange carrots. The predominant carotenoid pigment in yellow and white carrots is believed to be xanthophyll.
In the early 1980s, different baby food manufacturers used different methods to calculate the amount of vitamin A in their products. Today the FDA enforces a generally common conversion ratio range from the National Academy of Sciences that ensures generally uniform labeling.
Commercially prepared baby foods are often categorized into different groups, such as juices, fruits, vegetables and dinners. Dinners are foods that normally include one protein rich food as a characterizing ingredient with names that describe some, but not the totality of the contents, e.g., macaroni and beef; vegetable-chicken and turkey-rice. Similarly, vegetables are foods that include one or more vegetables with names that are generally descriptive, e.g., mixed vegetables.
From a historical perspective, these dinners and vegetables often contained a) orange carrots and b) fillers. Fillers are edible ingredients, such as starches and flours, that may be refined from naturally accurring whole foods, but are not whole foods, and that are added to the baby food to thicken and stabilize the food. Fillers have low perceived nutritional value and are low in cost. In contrast, whole foods are food materials which include all of the edible portion of raw agricultural products and which have not been subjected to extensive processing such as undergone by flours and starches. In the past, Beech-Nut Nutrition Corporation (Beech-Nut), the assignee of the present patent application, once produced a macaroni and beef dinner that included approximately 17% orange carrots and approximately 4% rice starch and rice flour by weight, and a turkey-rice dinner that included approximately 17% orange carrots and approximately 7% rice starch and rice flour by weight. Mixed vegetables included approximately 25% orange carrots and approximately 5% rice starch and rice flour by weight.
In the early 1990s, Beech-Nut decided to change its formulations and introduced a "whole food concept" that drastically reduced or eliminated the starch and flour fillers. One way to implement this whole food concept was to increase the amount of orange carrots in the baby food formula. Orange carrots are widely cultivated, economical to produce and are available year round to baby food producers in a fresh or frozen form. Unfortunately, an increase in the orange carrot content of the baby food resulted in two undesirable results.
First, the increased orange carrot content increased the chances that a baby would develop carotenemia, which will be discussed in greater depth below. Second, the increased carrot content tended to give all of the different dinners a generally orange color. Mothers prefer to feed their babies a diverse diet, composed of a wide variety of foods, perceiving it to be more healthy. Mothers judge variety, at least in part, on the colors of the baby foods. It is therefore advantageous from a marketing perspective to differentiate the dinners by name and overall appearance, without the use of fillers.
One way to address these undesirable results is to decrease the amount of orange carrots and increase the amount of peas or other green vegetables, e.g., broccoli and green beans, in the formula. Unfortunately peas, broccoli and green beans are more expensive than orange carrots on an equivalent consistency basis, and so are less viable economic alternatives. Until the present invention was discovered, the aforementioned undesirable results were implicit in dinners that were produced using the whole food concept.
In addition to the color differentiation problem, carotenemia can occur in some babies fed baby foods that contain orange carrots or other foods rich in carotenoids. Carotenemia is a condition of yellowish discoloration of the skin resulting from ingestion of large amounts of food containing carotenoids. Carotenemia is most likely to be confused with jaundice but can be distinguished clinically by the absence of yellow pigmentation of the sclera and mucous membranes. The importance of carotenemia is that it should be properly identified and not confused with jaundice. Although carotenemia is a benign condition, it may arouse considerable anxiety in parents and can lead to unnecessary medical evaluation.
All carrots are described botanically as Daucus carota; however, Americans are most familiar with orange carrot cultivars. Historically, these orange carrots had a beta-carotene content of 50-100 ppm (8,350 International Units "IU"!--16,700 IU per 100 grams). For purposes of comparison, the average cantaloupe has a beta-carotene content of approximately 15-20 ppm. However, Americans have become fascinated with the perceived benefits of beta-carotene, and carrot breeders have developed new cultivars that have even a higher beta-carotene content--in the range of 75-150 ppm (12,525 IU-25,050 IU per 100 grams). It is believed that the beta-carotene content of orange carrots commercially available in the U.S. may increase in the future due to the development of new cultivars that contain even more beta-carotene. Largely unknown in America are other carrot cultivars that can be called "white carrots," that have a beta-carotene content of less than 10 ppm (1667 IU per 100 grams). Another type of carrot also exists that is generally called a "yellow carrot," that also has a beta-carotene content of less than 10 ppm. In cold storage, some white carrots can become yellow and vice versa.
In the invention of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/604,616, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,723,166 it was found that white and/or yellow carrots can be used in lieu of, or in combination with, orange carrots in baby food to reduce the level of beta-carotene and thus the risk of carotenemia and simultaneously to permit color variety in the appearance of the product. White carrot cultivars are little known in the United States. Some white carrot cultivars are grown abroad, primarily as a forage crop for livestock. Applicants are not aware of any other U.S. patent art that refers to white carrots.
In the invention of the noted co-pending U.S. patent application, it also was found that white sweet potatoes can be used in lieu of, or in combination with, white carrots and orange carrots to achieve the aforementioned results. The term "white sweet potatoes" refers to tubers of light colored flesh of the species Ipomoea batata, of the morning glory family, Convolvulaceae, having a beta-carotene content of less than 20 ppm.
White sweet potatoes are known in the patent art. For example, see U.S. Patent Nos.: U.S. Pat. No. 4,925,697 entitled "Process for Products from Sweet Potato"; U.S. Pat. No. 5,204,133 entitled "Process for Products from Sweet Potato" and U.S. Pat. No. 5,244,689 entitled "Flour, Bread, Milk and Other Products from White Sweet Potatoes, Cassava, Edible Aroids, Amaranth, Yams and Lotus." All of these patents are related and have a common inventor, Karen M. Slimak. Some of the aforementioned patents disclose the use of white sweet potatoes as the primary constituent of a hypoallergenic flour that can be used in lieu of wheat flour. These patents teach that such flour can be used in an infant formula, but make no mention of direct use of the undried and unground vegetable tuber or root in baby food. Other related patents by Ms. Slimak are listed on the Information Disclosure Statement which is filed concurrently herewith.
Parsnips are known in the art to have been used in baby foods. Parsnips are the white or yellowish root of the species Pastinaca sativa. Parsnips can be used in lieu of, or in combination with, orange carrots to reduce beta-carotene levels. Both parsnips and white sweet potatoes have disadvantages that will be discussed below.
However, due to price and availability fluctuations with respect to any particular food product, and further due to the desires for diversity in foods, the need still exists to locate or to develop other baby food ingredients that are whole foods, but are also relatively low in beta-carotene and do not significantly interfere with the color of the baby food imparted by other ingredients. Moreover, the problem in locating replacements for fillers is compounded by the fact that the replacement must be suitable for use in a baby food, which requires that the replacement not only satisfy the criteria identified above, but also be safe, grindable, (or choppable and puree-able either in raw or cooked form) of suitable particulate size, texture and consistency for consumption by babies and not impart undesirable taste. In fact, it is most desirable that the replacement have little or no distinctive taste, so as not to alter significantly the taste imparted by the other ingredients of the baby food.